Kid Licks - Imitated, Never Duplicated

Here at Kid Licks, we take our slogan "so natural it's edible" seriously, and give a full list of our ingredients on each bottle and on our website. But not everybody does. Which is why we weren't entirely surprised to see that another "edible" nail polish may be entering the market later this year, but with mystery ingredients (at least we can't find a listing of them online). What did surprise us is that the roll out is being done by KFC Hong Kong, and the polish is meant to taste like KFC chicken, which is a bit of a stomach churning thought.

The funniest part about this? Ogilvy, the ad agency behind the roll out, contacted us in January to see if we could make a chicken flavored nail polish, and seems to have pulled a lot of their ad copy from the Kid Licks website.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but KFC seems to have missed a crucial point about Kid Licks, namely that the reason it's edible is because we formulated it with organic whole ingredients like beet juice, carrot juice and acacia fiber - all things we would feel comfortable with if they got in our kids' mouths. In other words, we set out to make the most non-toxic nail polish in the world, and it just so happens that it's edible as a result.

This is also why our polishes taste like what they're made from - beet red like beets, sour carrot orange like sour carrots, and barley grass green like barley grass. Now, we don't know if KFC's polish really tastes like chicken, but you can bet that the chicken flavor comes from natural or artificial flavors, in other words, chemicals. Of course, we can't say for sure, because the ingredients don't seem to be available. We're all for nail polishes that are less toxic than the norm, and certainly one would hope these would be if KFC is encouraging people to lick them. But we're not enamored with the mystery ingredients and potential chemical flavorings.

This is something we've talked about in relation to other "non-toxic" nail polishes, including polishes marketed toward kids. They often contain synthetic pigments and petroleum resins like polyurethanes and acrylic co-polymers. They also usually require toxic remover to take off.

That said, we're always open to new ideas for nail polish colors, and we've got more in the works as we speak. Surprisingly, none of them is chicken. But if you have an idea for a new Kid Licks color derived from real organic fruits or vegetables, send it to us and if we end up using it, we'll put your beautiful face up on the Kid Licks website for the world to see. Plus, you'll get your very own bottle of the new polish for free, and you can't beat that, because Kid Licks is still the world's only, imitated but never duplicated, organic, edible nail polish.